


all your art of war

by lagaudiere



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-09
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2019-04-20 13:36:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14262135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lagaudiere/pseuds/lagaudiere
Summary: The first time they drifted, they lasted for 24 seconds.Everyone thought they’d be able to do it so easily, and everyone included Jake. So many of the great jaeger teams were siblings. You usually couldn’t get more solid, more in sync than that. But he knew he’d miscalculated the moment his mind touched Mako’s.Or, what if Pacific Rim Uprising was much more focused on Mako and Jake's relationship and also different in several other ways?





	all your art of war

In training, Mako always said that he was stubborn. Actually, she said that his inability to compromise made him a terrible drift partner, but that was what she meant. Mako was never compromising with him, never held back from saying exactly what she wanted to. She was stubborn too, although she’d never admit to it.    
  
Mako was older, but she waited to start ranger training until Jake was old enough — everyone thought they would be partners, would be drift compatible. They’d have their own jaeger someday, everyone said so.    
  
“If we’re still fighting the war then,” their father said, stern-faced, when Jake mentioned it. “God willing, we won’t be.”    
  
For Mako, there was never any question of letting their father down. For Jake it was inevitable — it seemed like he’d been doing it in various ways for as long as he could remember.    
  
When they were children, Jake hated fighting with Mako. When they argued about something trivial, about what to watch on TV or whose turn it was to set the table, Mako would just go silent. She’d refuse to speak to Jake at all, staring at him with wide eyes that could have been full of resentment or fear.    
  
Jake, whose ordinary inclination was to snide remarks under his breath, would eventually resort to raising his voice, calling her names and, when she didn’t respond to that, eventually just yelling, “Mako! Mako! Say something!”    
  
When their father heard those conflicts, he’d stomp down the stairs from his office, bellowing with an authority Jake would never have been able to muster himself, “Jacob! What’s going on here?”    
  
And Jake would protest that Mako had started it, that she was giving him the silent treatment, which was just as bad as yelling, but their father never believed him.    
  
Once, he’d said, “Don’t you ever speak to your sister like that,” and Jake, nine years old and stupidly angry, had responded, “She’s not my real sister.”    
  
Major Stacker Pentecost glared at him with the full authority of the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps, and Jake immediately regretted it, shrinking back with immediate shame. “Do you think Mako would say that about you?”    
  
“No,” Jake mumbled.    
  
“You are family,” his father said, staring him down, “because you’re my children. And you’ll always be family. If anything ever happens to me, you’ll be each other’s only family. You understand that?”    
  
Jake did, the weight of it something he’d been raised to understand his whole life, like so many children of their generation had.    
  
“I get it,” he said.    
  
No matter how inquisitive the looks he got, he always introduced Mako as his sister. You didn’t choose your family, he’d say with a shrug, by way of explanation, and usually people wouldn’t ask.    
  
***   
“You can’t do this to that kid,” Jake tells the hologram of Mako across the table from him. Her hair is severe, her uniform is sharp and her face is stern. She’s usually stern, now.    
  
She doesn’t respond for a moment, just looks at him, like he’s still supposed to be able to read her mind.    
  
“She’s a child,” Jake presses on, deep irritation thrumming under his skin. “I’ll come to the base with you, whatever, but she’s a little kid, I’m not letting you make her into a good little soldier.”    
  
Mako frowns at him. “Where else is she going to go?” she says, not really a question. “You want to hand her over to people who will see her as a security threat?”    
  


Jake stops himself from slamming his hand into the table, but only just barely. “We don’t have to do this anymore, you know,” he says. “There aren’t any bloody monsters breaking down the doors. Just because they made us do those things, other kids don’t have to keep doing them.”    
  
Mako just keeps giving him a measured look.    
  
Ten years is a long time since the end of a war, but also not very long at all. When the kaiju were attacking, rangers were celebrities, adored like real-life superheroes. Once there weren’t any kaiju anymore, the world had to find a need for jaegers. There are plenty of them still in the formal international military now, like Mako, on patrol to hold back petty human conflicts instead of alien invasion. The others are in the hands of private corporations and national security forces, being put to even worse uses.    
  
Jake gets it. It’s hard to give up such a great propaganda symbol, shining, strong and perfect for making into children’s toys. But these days he prefers kaiju bones over walking jaegers.    
  
“Final offer,” she says. “If you agree, and she agrees, you can work with her. Give her a chance to make something of herself, be more than a petty criminal.”    
  
It’s not a subtle dig, as much as she phrases it like one.    
  
“Who’s gonna be my co-pilot?” Jake says warily.    
  
Mako smiles at him slightly. “I believe there’s an opening beside Ranger Lambert,” she says.    
  
***   
The first time they drifted, they lasted for 24 seconds.    
  
Everyone thought they’d be able to do it so easily, and everyone included Jake. So many of the great jaeger teams were siblings. You usually couldn’t get more solid, more in sync than that. But he knew he’d miscalculated the moment his mind touched Mako’s.    
  
It was her memories, flooding through him immediately — he was inside her head, small, alone, scared, everyone was gone and she was alone she was going to die she was too young to understand what death really was but she knew then it was coming, it was ending —    
  
— she was waking up screaming in the middle of the night with flashbacks, holding in her sobs and clutching her knees to her chest so she wouldn’t wake anyone else up —    
  
— she was training, learning to fight, and she couldn’t spar with anyone without it feeling too real, without feeling the threat of being overpowered breathing down her neck —    
  
— she was sitting at home eating dinner with her father and brother and it was nothing, completely ordinary and unremarkable, but she felt so far apart from it, so distant and strange and broken in a way that she couldn’t put into words —    
  
“Mako!” Jake called out, struggling to speak out loud. “Mako, you have to control your memories!”    
  
He saw her body jerk almost helplessly. “I’m trying, I — it feels like they’re being pulled out of me — Jake, stop.”    
  
“I’m not doing anything,” Jake said, and he wasn’t, he tried to focus and to stay above it, but they were both too deep in her head.    
  
“Stop!” Mako cried, and she ripped off the neural equipment. Immediately, she relaxed, sagging with relief and exhaustion. “Why did that... why did that happen?”    
  
Jake tried to gather his thoughts, just as overwhelmed. It had felt like both of their minds were totally overwhelmed with Mako’s memories; he couldn’t even reach his, must less drift with her successfully. 

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m sorry, Mako…” 

Their instructor, after fumbling to turn off the equipment, came over to them with arms crossed. “Let’s try it again, cadets,” she said. “It’s normal not to get it your first try.” 

They tried it again, and quite a few more times after that, over the course of the next months. They couldn’t ever get it right. Their emotional transfer couldn’t balance, the instructors said. They were all out of whack, getting stuck in a web of Mako’s memories or sometimes of their shared memories, circling around and tangling themselves up.

“It’s not that unusual,” their father said. “Just become some of our successful pairs are siblings doesn’t mean all siblings will be successful pairs.” 

Jake exchanged a glance with Mako, seated beside him across from their father's desk. “We  _ are _ trying,” Mako said, sounding like she was trying to convince him. 

“It’s alright. The two of you are still exceptionally qualified. You’ll go through the personality testing like anyone else, you’ll find copilots.” 

Jake glanced down at the floor. He had been expecting this news, and almost expecting to feel relief, but instead he felt a wave of sick guilt. “I’m sorry,” he said. 

“There’s nothing to feel sorry for,” their father said, firmly. “It’s not either of your fault, and it’s not because you’re not biologically related. It’s just the way these things go.” 

Jake and Mako nodded at the same time. It’s as close as they got to being in sync. 

  
***   
“I need a partner,” Nate says. “That’s why I’m doing this.”    
  
Jake throws a duffle bag onto the empty bed in their newly shared quarters. He flops back onto it, kicking off his shoes as he does so. It’s been a long day. “Relax,” he says. “I know that.”    
  
Nate’s standing just out of the doorway with his arms crossed, looking somewhere between uncomfortable and just angry. “We’ll have to get used to the drift again,” he says.    
  
Jake halfway sits up, propping himself up on an elbow. “If you say so,” he says cautiously. “I thought we were just training the next generation of human sacrifices.”    
  
Nate’s expression twists into a full-blown scowl. “I don’t know what happened to you, Pentecost,” he says. “You could’ve been a hero. We’d giving you a second chance to.”    
  
Jake can’t resist laughing. “You think we’re gonna get a chance to be heroes?” he says. “I know what you’re thinking, you know. Even without the drift. You’re all just waiting for them to come back, praying for it.”    
  
Nate takes a step closer to him, one hand curling into a fist at his side. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says.    
  
“Right.” Jake sits up fully, looks him square in the eyes. “Then what are we all doing here, Lambert? If we’re not training little kids for the next war? There’s gotta be something to fight. Otherwise you’d all be out of a job.”    
  
He can see the faint way that Nate’s shoulders are shaking, the fingernails biting into the skin of his clenched fist. He remembers the contours of Nate’s mind when he gets angry, how hard he has to try not to lash out or punch a wall, the dark weight of bile that settles in his stomach. It almost makes Jake regret it.    
  
“Those kids are gonna be ready,” Nate says. He turns towards the door and reaches for the doorknob, pausing for just a moment before he strides out. “If you’re not going to help with that, you can get the fuck out.”    
  
***   
It was always easy with Nate at first. 

After their attempts to be drift compatible failed, Mako went off to train at another Shatterdome, leaving Jake with an apologetic half-smile and the words “Stay out of trouble.” 

He met Nate a week later, when a tall, blonde, grinning stranger threw himself down next to Jake where he was sitting alone in the training facility’s cafeteria. “Hey,” he said. “Pentecost?” 

Jake looked up, with a mouthful of lukewarm French fries, and raised his eyebrows. “Yeah?” he said quizzically. 

“I’m Nate Lambert,” the blonde stranger said. “The results of our neural compatibility tests came back. Looks like we’re a pretty good match.” 

The test was a newer technology, developed to match up cadets who’d entered the training program without a partner. Jake hadn’t paid that much attention to his instructor’s explanation of how it worked when he went in for his CAT scan, but it was supposed to match you with people who thought it similar ways, people whose brains worked like yours did.

Jake gave Nate Lambert a skeptical once-over. Lambert looked around his age, sixteen, but if he’d ever gone through an awkward phase, he was clearly already far removed from it. He grinned at Jake with shiny, flawless teeth, his expression eager and open. 

Jake swallowed hard and looked down at the table. “Uh,” he said. “Well, that’s good news, I guess.” 

“Yeah!” Nate said. “I’ve tried it with a couple people, but it’s never been that great, you know, it hasn’t worked that well? You’ve only done it with your sister, right? Do you want to go try it now?” 

Jake has to resist making a comment about the phrasing, which Nate seems totally oblivious to. “We can,” he said, cautiously. “Try drifting, I mean. But don’t be offended if it doesn’t work out.” 

Nate’s grin narrowed into a bit of smirk. “Sure,” he said. “Same to you.” 

When they started the simulation, Jake really wasn’t expecting it to work well, despite the results of the test. Especially not at first — if his experiences with Mako had taught him anything, it was that drifting was hard work, way harder than any other part of ranger training. 

But when he felt the presence of Nate’s mind, it wasn’t anything like that. Nate’s mental energy was thrumming with a kind of bright, jittery energy, but it didn’t veer into anxiety. Jake could feel his eagerness, his desire for attention and to get ahead, but it all narrowed to a sharp point of focus. 

It was easy to mold the patterns of his own thinking to Nate’s. Jake floated through a few of his memories — growing up in the American Midwest, with parents who regarded his interest in joining the PPDC as a personality defect — but they don’t pull him down like Mako’s memories do. He could feel Nate accepting his memories, too, turning them over in his mind without any judgment. 

Nate grinned at him on the other side of the simulation rig. “Want to go kick some ass?” he asked, and Jake nodded. 

“Usually people have more trouble suppressing their memories than that,” Jake said after they ran through the routine — much more successfully than he and Mako ever had. “You seemed, uh, pretty good at it.” 

Nate shrugged. “So did you,” he said. “I guess we’re in-the-moment kind of guys.” 

  
***   
It doesn’t take Jake long after coming back to realize the PPDC is in trouble. Amara doesn’t get it — she’s a kid, and seeing a full-size jaeger being used for purposes other than combatting minor crime is enough to impress her. But Jake knows better. 

The program is down to a handful of qualified pilots, and most of them are under the age of eighteen. Mako isn’t even piloting anymore; she’s moved into the bureaucracy game with Raleigh, the other hero of the Breach. Nate’s old partner, who Jake never met, left for a job in the private sector, and he’s not the only one. Besides that, jaeger pilots still have a pretty high mortality rate. Turns out people are just as good at killing each other as they always have been. 

The rest of their cohort from the old days have more or less entirely vanished, running security for megacorporations or trading on the reputation of the program by wrestling robots on TV. Whatever it is they’re all sitting around getting ready for, their level of preparedness is at an all-time low. 

And Mako’s managed to find the worst solution possible.

“Really, drones?” Jake says, looking over the plans she’s spread out in front of him with contempt. “You really think that’s going to fix what’s wrong here?” 

Jake knows jaeger pilots. Half of them are only held back from making catastrophic decisions on any given day because they or their co-pilots might get hurt. Take that away and you just take giant robots running through every city in the world, unmanned and reckless. He’s not a fan of that idea. 

Mako looks at him with the coldness he’s gotten so accustomed to, her expression broadcasting loud and clear her doubt that he has anything worthwhile to say. “It might,” she says. “We don’t have a lot of other options.” 

“Don’t see why you need any options,” Jake mutters. “I don’t know if you noticed, Mako, but the breach is closed.” 

She sighs, closing her eyes and leaning back slightly in her chair. “Weren’t you the one telling me we shouldn’t be sending young people into battle?” she says. “This is an alternative. It’s another way to do things.” 

“Things that you don’t have to do in any way,” Jake says. “You ever think about getting out of the war game, Mako? Actually trying to make the world a better place?” 

“Like you?” she says simply, sharply. 

He knows what she means, of course. But he’s not going to feel inferior about not knowing how to live in a world without monsters. She isn’t any better. That’s how they were raised. Both of them have spent ten years in limbo, unable to imagine how to move forward with their lives now that the kaiju aren’t coming back. At least Jake knows it. 

He gets up from his chair across the low table in her quarters, suddenly wanting nothing more than to go to the gym and run until his legs hurt so much he can’t think about anything else. 

“Okay, Mako,” he says. “But if you think jaegers without pilots are gonna solve any problems, you’re wrong.”

***

Jake and Nate were star students in the program, and from the moment they started drifting they were pretty much inseparable. 

They were good at it, so good at it they learned to be in sync so much it almost didn’t matter if they weren’t drifting. Nate just  _ got  _ him, and Jake kind of loved him for it. 

Maybe more than kind of. 

He wasn’t planning on saying anything about it, but it was the nature of the drift — you couldn’t really have secrets from each other. Jake notices it after they kill their fifteenth simulated kaiju. It was a small memory floating across his mind, when they toppled the thing off the Golden Gate Bridge into the ocean. It was just a flicker of Nate remembering the last time they’d sparred in training, of Jake using his momentum to knock Nate to the floor and semi-gracefully falling on top of him. He felt, from Nate’s perspective, the weight of the two of them falling together, felt Nate’s eyes widen and his breathe catch as he looked up at Jake’s face inches away from his.

There wasn’t any discomfort, in the drift. At least while their minds were connected, they both knew. 

“So,” Jake said afterwards. “What do you think, wanna make out sometime?” 

Nate looked at him, mental connection now only background fuzz and hair sticking to his forehead with sweat. “You serious?” he said, and when Jake nodded, Nate darted forward and kissed him. 

So sure, there was a war on, but all things considered Jake’s life was pretty good. 

One day, after a long and unexpected silence, Mako called him from training. Her voice sounded tinny and distant down the long-distance line, and Jake couldn’t quite read the tone of her voice. “I heard they found you a drift partner,” she said. 

“Yeah,” Jake said, sprawled out across his bunk in the cadet’s quarters. “He’s great, actually, it’s been going really well. We have a ninety-three percent kill rate in the simulations.” Mako was quiet, so he kept talking. “What about you, they find you anyone?” 

He heard a harsh exhale on the other end. “He won’t let me try yet,” Mako said. 

Jake sat up. “What?” He didn’t have to ask who she meant. “What’s his reason for that?” 

“He says I’m not ready mentally,” Mako said. Her tone was even, but clearly tense. “I have too much anger. It’s not productive to seek revenge.” 

“You know that’s not true,” Jake snapped. “You don’t want  _ revenge _ , he’s being a dick.” 

“Maybe he’s right,” Mako said. “You seem to be doing fine now that we’re no longer working together.” 

Jake rolled his eyes, to himself. “Don’t let him talk you into that. He’s afraid of something happening to you, that’s all it is. You know better.” 

There was another moment of silence before Mako replied. “Thank you,” Mako said. “I’ll keep trying. But he is my commanding officer.”

Jake almost smiled. “Sure,” he said. “But who’re you gonna listen to, your commanding officer or your brother?” 

***

Jake watches Amara in the simulations much more closely than he watches the other students. He can’t help it; he’s biased. 

But to be fair, Amara is also having a lot more trouble. 

They expect too much from the cadets these days, Jake thinks, watching her stomp away from another practice session with simmering anger in her eyes, without a word to him or the other students. They’re supposed to be flexible enough to drift with anyone in their cohort, something that never would’ve been the norm when Jake was in training. But the problem isn’t that Amara can’t manage with everyone — she apparently can’t manage with anyone. 

“I really don’t know what to do with her,” Nate says, frowning, after the cadets walk out. “No offense to your personal recruit, but she’s not exactly a team player. 

She’s not, which is why Jake likes her so much. 

“She shouldn’t have to learn this shit,” Jake says, although he knows he shouldn’t. “Kid built her own single-person jaeger. Let her work on that. She’ll make millions.” 

Nate doesn’t really look at him like he’s angry anymore, Jake has noticed. It’s more like he’s considering him, feeling him out. 

“You’re probably right,” he says, to Jake’s great surprise, and he sighs. “Not really a fan of what they’ve done with the drift, honestly. It used to be a delicate process, you know, and now they just kind of expect anyone to be able to do it.” 

“Yeah.” Jake feels a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Well, you’re still the only one who can put up with me.” 

Nate nods towards the neural simulator behind them. “We do need to get in some practice, you know,” he says. 

It’s been a long time since he drifted with Nate. With anyone. If he’s being honest, Jake sort of doubts that he can still do it, can still manage that kind of connection. 

“Sure,” he says, casually, and straps on the gear. 

The neural handshake doesn’t feel familiar, exactly, but it’s not entirely foreign either. Nate’s mind is a comfortable old hangout, in some ways. They’ve done this so many times. 

“Right hemisphere… left hemisphere…” 

It feels deliberate, the way Nate is broadcasting his memories, almost like he’s spread out a photo album in front of Jake and is showing him snapshots. There’s the last ten years of his life, and it’s oddly monochrome, monotone, years of military missions, years of fighting. He feels the sharp anger of Nate losing his second co-pilot, the unexpected ripple in a life calculated to avoid change. 

Further back, then, and he remembers through Nate’s eyes the day that he left, the note left on the bedside table, the confusion and anger and hurt that hadn’t ever fully healed. 

“It has to be a two-way street, Pentecost,” he hears Nate say distantly. “You gotta let it go.” 

The last ten years of Jake’s life aren’t pretty, he thinks. He doesn’t really want to show it off, doesn’t want anyone else seeing that. But he lets his mind unfold slowly, tries to let his walls down. 

“There we go,” he hears Nate say. “You’re back.” 

***

When the breach is closed, Mako is the hero. It makes sense, Jake thinks. She was always the type. 

He and Nate were weeks away from being sent on their first real mission when it all happened. Jake’s family didn’t exactly stay in communication while it was all going down, either. He knew about all the issues with the program, with the anti-kaiju wall, but triple events? Throwing bombs into the breach? 

No one told him. No one told him until after it was all over, when Mako called to tell him their father had died. 

As soon as Jake heard her say it, he hung up the phone. He didn’t want her to hear him cry. 

He spent the next few hours huddled in his bunk, alone. The tears dried up eventually, and then there was just an odd, numb strangeness. 

Jake had known his father was sick, but on some level he had just assumed he would get better. Someone would find a cure, or he would simply fight it off like he did everything else. He was the most steady, implacable person Jake knew. The anchor of PPDC, the world’s last best hope. He couldn’t be dead; it wasn’t possible. 

Mako called him what feel like dozens of times, but he didn’t pick up, and eventually she stopped. 

Jake heard the sounds of celebration in the background, distant and foreign. The cadets and officers were cheering, fireworks going off with jarring, explosive sounds. 

They should have been celebrating, of course. The war that had been Jake’s whole life was over. But it still seemed wrong. 

Nate was the one who came looking for him, of course. There was knock on the door, even though it was their shared room and Nate had never hesitated to just let himself in with his keycard before. 

“Jake?” he said hesitantly, voice small. 

Jake didn’t turn his face away from the wall. “Yeah, come in.” 

He heard the sound of the door opening and Nate’s footsteps advancing, just a little, and stopping. “Hi,” he said. “I didn’t want to, um. I wanted to give you some time. Are you… are you okay, man?” 

Jake snorted and swiped a few stray tears from his eyes. “No, I’m not fuckin’ okay, Nate,” he said. “What do you wanna hear?” 

He heard Nate take just one step backwards. “I just meant… I wanna know if. If I can help.” 

Jake just kept staring at the wall. “You can’t help, Nate,” he said. “What’re you gonna do? Kiss it all better?” 

The silence is oppressive. Jake has no idea how long it went on for until Nate said, “Are you going to stay?” 

“What?” 

“Are you going to stay in the program?” Nate said, a little louder. 

Jake hadn’t thought about it. It hadn’t occurred to him until that moment to wonder if there would even be a jaeger program the next morning, and it crashed over him as yet another wave of wave of confusion, another thing he simply couldn’t handle. 

“I don’t know,” he said, aware of how harsh his voice sounded. “No offense, Nate, but can you like… go now?” 

There was another silence, followed by a small sigh. “If you want to talk,” Nate said, “I’ll be here.” 

Jake didn’t respond, and eventually there was the click of the door closing again. 

***

Jake’s helping himself to several Twinkies from the base’s kitchen at around 2 am when he turns to see Mako standing in the doorway, arms crossed. 

“Hello, Jake,” she says. “How is adhering to the program’s diet and sleep schedule going?” 

“Jesus. How long’ve you been standing there? It’s like this place is haunted.” He throws Mako a Twinkie, and she catches it effortlessly and tears it open. “Can’t help noticing you’re also awake at this hour,” he says, leaning back against the pantry door. 

“Reluctantly.” Mako sighs. “I spoke to Raleigh about the rogue jaeger.” 

Jake’s only met Raleigh Becket, second or third place hero of the breach, a handful of times. He and Mako were co-pilots for a while after the war, until a little incident with a country that wasn’t adhering to the Jaeger Non-Proliferation Treaty ended up crushing both of his legs. He’s the PPDC’s liaison to the United Nations now; Jake sees him and Mako on the news together all the time. Jake didn’t go to the wedding. 

“Yeah?” he says. “What did he say about it?” 

Mako finishes her Twinkie and crumbles the plastic wrapper into a tiny ball, holding it tight in her fist. “He doesn’t know,” she says. “There aren’t any pilots with that level of skill who are unaccounted for. He said the jaegers aren’t equipped to allow a pilot to survive underwater for any significant length of time.” 

“Must be a retrofit,” Jake says. “Raleigh can’t have kept track of everyone with the ability to do that. I mean, Amara built a jaeger herself and she didn’t finish the fifth grade.” 

“I know.” Mako hesitates, then says, “I wondered if you might know anyone. Any of the people you worked with over the last ten years.” 

Jake shrugs and throws himself into a kitchen chair. When he gestures to her, Mako sits down across from her, letting go of the crumpled wrapper and folding her hands delicately in front of her. 

“The people I worked with were mostly trying to add old jaeger tech to the backs of their motorcycles,” Jake said. “Sometimes you’d get a guy calling himself a scientist wanting to neural link with a mini fridge. They’re not the type who would do this.” 

“But someone could have resold the parts,” Mako presses. “There are organizations — terrorists, extremists, the kaiju cults.” 

Jake stiffens. “You think those are the people I dealt with?” 

“I don’t know!” Mako’s voice raises slightly, uncharacteristically. “How would I know what you did all the time you were gone, Jake? You left. You only called me when you needed bail money.” 

He can’t look her in the eye. “I did at the beginning,” he says. “Then it got pretty clear that the great Secretary General Mako Mori didn’t want to hear from her fuck-up brother.” 

Mako’s hands slam down onto the table as she leans forward to look at him. “Of course I wanted to hear from you,” she says. “I wanted to  _ help  _ you.” 

He wishes he could be angry with her. He’s always been angry with her before, but seeing her in person again, not in hologram form or on the evening news, has taken the edge off that. 

“I know,” he says. “I didn’t want it. Bad case of survivor's guilt, I guess.” 

She gives a sad smile. “I know,” she says. “I felt that way too, you know? We could have talked to each other about it.” 

Jake stuffs a remaining bite of snack cake into his mouth and chews for a long moment, looking off at the opposing wall while Mako continues to watch him. “Wish he would’ve said goodbye,” he says. 

“He would have,” Mako says, her tone insistent. “If he had known what would happen, Jake, he would have. He wasn’t a perfect man, and he could not face the fact that he was dying, but if he had known what he’d have to do… he would have.” 

“Yeah.” There are tears pricking at the corners of Jake’s eyes. “I guess.” 

“He loved you,” Mako says. “He did it for both of us, you know. To leave a better world, for both of us.” 

She reaches across the table for Jake’s hand, and he lets her take it. It feels familiar. Not exactly comfortable, but like it could be again. 

*** 

There was an odd period at the PPDC after the close of the breach in which nothing much happened. The jaeger program had certainly proven itself, but in doing so it had made itself obsolete. Humanity had made its own monsters, and now they had nothing to fight. 

There was some brief talk of disbanding the PPDC, but the corps had earned themselves so much fame and clout on the international stage that no one really wanted that to happen. 

“There’s still plenty of evil out there,” Nate said, in what he meant to be a reassuring tone. They’d reverted to sharing one bunk in their quarters after a few nights of separation, and Nate ran a hand across Jake’s hair gently. It didn’t quite succeed in being calming; Jake wished it did. 

“There’s people out there,” Jake said. 

He couldn’t picture it, killing a person. He and Nate had never even been in battle against a kaiju, and those weren’t human, they were mindless killing machines. A person, even someone hostile and violent — Jake couldn’t how he would respond to that. Were they supposed to smash down on people with metal fists, crush them under jaegers’ feet? 

The thought made Jake vaguely sick. He hid his eyes from Nate, face pressed against his shoulder, so he wouldn’t see. 

“We got into the program to protect innocent people, right?” Nate said. “There will always be things to protect them from. Human or not."

The thing is, Jake didn’t get into the program to protect innocent people. He’d gotten into it because of his father, and his father’s gone now. Maybe Nate’s got the stomach for deciding which human lives are worth saving, maybe Stacker Pentecost did. But Jake didn’t. 

“What a hero,” Jake mumbled, and kissed Nate to distract himself. 

He saw it in the drift, though. He saw it all in the drift. 

Two days later, the program introduced new simulation programs alongside the old kaiju runs. There are a range of new scenarios: rogue nuclear weapons, terrorist attacks, countries outside the PPDC Nations Alliance attacking. 

Jake slipped out from under Nate’s arm that night and threw his few possessions into a duffle bag. He couldn’t face leaving in the light of day, but he knew he had to get out somehow. He knew he never wanted to go back. 

*** 

Outside of the shatterdome, Jake watches the Shao Industries drones heading towards their location, looking like loose-limbed marionette puppets dangling from planes.  _ There’s our replacement _ , he thinks, with a mixture of dread and satisfaction. 

Then everything goes to shit. 

Jake doesn’t think he’ll ever forget the image of kaiju blue gushing out of the robots’ chests. He realizes immediately he was wrong, all these years, in thinking that he would never fight a kaiju. 

Jake reels around in what feels halfway to a panic. He searches the gathered crowd, trying to locate everyone, scanning desperately for an escape route. He spins on his heel to see Nate behind him, already trying to push the cadets behind him, to stand between them and the drones. 

Nate catches his eyes, and Jake nearly freezes. They’ve been through simulations together dozens of times, but they’ve never been in battle. Not like this. This is the first time Jake has felt real fear that he could lose him, and it’s like a punch to the gut. 

“Nate,” Jake says, and then yells over the screaming and the sound of metal grinding together, “Nate! Get to the shatterdome!” 

He sees Jake say something to the cadets, pointing to the nearest shatterdome entrance, already clogging with people. The kids take off running, and Nate turns back to Jake, gestures to his a sweeping  _ Come with me.  _

“I’ve gotta find Amara!” Jake yells back. “I’ll be right there, I have to get Amara — go!” 

Nate’s face seizes with anxiety, and he looks like he’s about to say something. Another drone fist crashes into the ground, and it feels like the whole campus is shaking. Nate gives Jake a terse nod and takes off running after the cadets. 

Chest heaving, kaiju blood flying through the air around him, Jake does the stupidest possible thing and runs towards the drones. 

He can’t see any sign of Amara — she’s so small, and they separated her from the rest of the cadets — but he calls out for her, screaming her name as loudly as he can, and then he hears the scream back. 

_ “Jake!”  _

He catches sight of her then, hair flying out behind her, the dusky pink hoodie she put on when her uniform was taken away flapping wildly. 

Jake sprints towards her as quickly as he can, but it’s not quickly enough. She’s so far away, and he has to push through the chaos, the throng of people running the other way, the kaiju blue blood streaming through the air. 

He sees the drone’s fist swinging towards her before she does, and he screams, unable to articulate anything except her name, throws himself forward as fast as he can but he’s not going to get there in time, he’s not — 

Jake stumbles just as he sees another figure fling itself towards Amara, knocking her out of the way and tumbling after her a hair’s breadth away from the drone’s limb. 

In a moment, they’re back on their feet and Jake realizes who the person is pulling Amara after her, hurtling towards the shatterdome.  _ Mako.  _

A second later, his sister’s hand grabs the back of his uniform collar and hauls him to his feet. 

“Wrong way,” Mako says curtly, and together they run after Amara for whatever semblance of safety there might be. 

***

“You were right,” Mako says, later the night the drones attack. Her head is hanging down in exhaustion, hair falling over downcast eyes. “I should’ve listened to you.” 

The rest of the surviving leadership of the PPDC is having three separate arguments at once in the research lab, yelling over each other and gesticulating wildly. Mako hasn’t said much. She looks bitterly tired, and Jake wants to reach out to her. He doesn’t. 

“Well,” he says. He’s still thinking about the visual of kaiju flesh bursting forth from the bodies of the jaegers. “I don’t think you could’ve predicted this.” 

“I’ve been trying to hold this together,” Mako says. “But I don’t think — I don’t think we can do this without Dad.” 

Her voice breaks, saying the word, and there’s a surge of fierce protectiveness in Jake’s chest. 

“Don’t say that,” Jake says. “You saved the world, huh? You can do it again.” 

She shakes her head slightly. “Without even knowing what we’re supposed to be saving it from? I don’t…” 

Jakes reaches out to her then, sets a hand on her shoulder. She looks at it for a moment with surprise, and Jake thinks about how long it’s been since he was the one to reach out to her. 

“You can do it,” he says. “You’re gonna make it work, Mako, and we’re all gonna be here to do whatever you need.”

She gives him a look that he thinks is gratitude. At the same moment, Jake hears the sound of a heavy metal door opening behind him. 

He and Mako simultaneously turn around. In the doorway a figure Jake would recognize anyway despite their relatively few in-person encounters: Raleigh Becket, humanity’s favorite war hero. And, he supposes, his brother-in-law. 

The minute he sees her, Raleigh bounds towards Mako. He’s more steady on his legs than Jake remembers; they’re prosthetics, built with jaeger-derived technology that allows him to operate them neurally. It’s a big step forward in tech, but the mental processing power it takes does prevent Raleigh from piloting a jaeger.

“Thank God you’re alright,” Raleigh says as he and Mako embrace. “How can I help, what do you need me to do?” 

Without stepping away from each other, they begin to conference in urgent voices. After a moment, Jake can’t help looking away. It’s a reminder of who Mako wants to be there comforting her, of who her family has been these last ten years, who she’s drift compatible with.

Across the room, Nate catches his eye. He looks tired, Jake thinks, but he imagines he must look pretty tired himself too. 

“Okay,” Mako says loudly before Jake can properly consider what to do next. “Listen up, everyone. This is what we are going to do.” 

*** 

It all comes together, somehow, impossibly. 

Gottlieb and Shao make repairs to the damaged jaegers, with help from Amara’s hard-won engineering experience. They make some alterations, too, rigging up several of the machines to non-corrupted Shao drone tech so that the cadets can pilot them remotely. It’s an enormous relief to Jake that they won’t actually be sending the kids into battle; even if none of them will ever be the same after this, at least he’ll be able to keep them alive. 

Shao even rigs up something for Mako and Raleigh, an adaption for Saber Athena that will let her pilot it while Raleigh shares the neutral load remotely. 

As for Jake and Nate, they’ve got Gipsy Avenger. 

He watches Mako put on her helmet with a little discomfort, and realizes with a start that he’s worn it more recently than she has. He watches her lean against her forehead against Raleigh’s for a long moment, apparently communicating without words. They nod to each other, determined, and Raleigh’s rushed away by Shao as Mako turns to Jake. 

“Hey,” Jake says. “Listen, I know Geiszler was — is? — your friend—“ 

She looks at him with resolute eyes. “We’re going to win,” she says.  

He nods. “That’s all I needed to hear.” 

She smiles, and Jake goes to meet his copilot. In the shadow of Gipsy Avenger, even with the apocalypse bearing down, Nate is glowing with pride. 

“Finest in the fleet,” Nate says as they strap into their gear, and he bites his lip. “You ready to do this?” 

“No,” Jake says honestly. “But I don’t have to do it alone.” 

When they initiate the neural handshake, it’s like there was never any interruption in their drift, like they’d never been separated. And Jake decides then and there with the warmth of Nate’s mind touching his that they’re going to make it through this; they’re going to come out on the opposite side together. 

Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as deciding. 

When they start to make a dent in the kaiju offensive, the sight of strange, small creatures skittering through the streets of Tokyo is alarming and the… the  _ thing  _ that rises up in front of them is terrifying. 

Jake feels Nate’s fear rising up alongside his own and he reaches out, fighting it down, keeping them both together. 

“Okay,” Nate says, slightly breathless. “Okay, we can do this.” 

Jake mostly believes it. 

They form an attack pattern with other jaegers, but the mega-kaiju punches through it. Jake sees Saber Athena dodge the attacks, but the others, the drones — they must not have the reflexes to do it, because it’s not like before they’re all disabled, smashed into parts against nearby buildings and hurled into the distance. 

“Goddamnit,” Jake swears, swiveling to try and get a better angle of attack. “This is not going as well as I hoped it would.” 

He hears how tense and harsh his voice is, hears the anxiety in Nate’s thoughts. 

“We have to hold it together,” Nate says, but Jake can tell it’s directed just as much at himself. “Stay focused, man.” 

He tries. They both try, but when the mega-kaiju’s tail comes swinging for them, they aren’t fast enough. Not quite. 

There’s a jarring crash as they fall against the closest building, a shattering sound and then, worst of all, a  _ crunch _ . They’re both thrown abruptly against the walls of the jaeger, and Jake feels the straps of his harness almost snap. He sees Saber Athena runs towards them as the kaiju lumbers past, on its way to the mountain. And then he feels a searing pain in his leg, so overpowering it’s a moment before he realizes it’s Nate’s pain, not his own. 

His copilot is dangling from broken gear with a sharp piece of metal jutting out of his knee. “Jake,” he says, “Fuck, oh, shit, I’m sorry.” 

Jake scrambles to undo his own straps, cold panic chilling his veins. Their pain and frantic worry is rebounding on each other, making his breath shallow and chest tight. 

Pulling off the neural gear and snapping the connection, Jake rushes to Nate’s side, clamping a hand over his gushing wound. 

“Shit,” Nate says weakly. “Jake, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I wanted to—"

His breathing is too quick, almost hyperventilation. “Shh,” Jake says. “It’s okay. We’ll get you out of here.” 

For a moment, he forgets about the rest of the world. Then he hears the heavy step of another jaeger approaching. 

As he looks up, he sees Saber Athena’s hatch open and the almost impossibly small-looking figure of its pilot climb out. “Open the hatch,” Mako’s voice says over the comms. “I’m coming in.”

Jake exchanges a helpless glance with Nate and opens the Avenger’s door as the Athena’s hand lifts Mako to it. Her face is sweaty and drained of blood but somehow, she doesn’t look afraid. “Ranger Lambert,” she says. “It’s time to go, come on. Ranger Becket will get you to safety in the Athena.”

Weakly, Nate nods. Without really knowing what he’s doing, Jake helps Mako half-carry him into the palm of the other jaeger. 

“Jake,” Nate says. Clutching his bleeding knee with one hand, he grabs Jake’s hand with the other. “Look at me. Come back, okay? Please try to come back.” 

Jake would cry if he could, if he wasn’t too scared to do that or much of anything else right now. “Yeah,” he says, squeezing his hand back. “Yeah, Nate, I’ll try.” 

The door closes between them and Jake sees Saber Athena cradle Nate’s body, depositing him safely in its cockpit. Only then does it occur to him to whirl around to Mako. 

“What are you doing?” 

She’s strapping herself into Nate’s gear, pulling on the neural pons helmet. “Giving you a copilot. Come on.”

Jake freezes. “Mako — I know we, uh, don’t have a lot of options here, but. You remember how this went, right? What if we can’t…” 

“We don’t have time for ‘what if’,” Mako snaps. “We have to do it. So we will. We’re wasting time, Jake.” 

It takes Jake longer than it probably should to put the gear back on. His hands are shaking. 

“Initiating handshake,” Mako says. He can hear just the slightest waver in her tone. 

Right brain. Left brain. Connection. 

Drifting with Nate, reconnecting with him after all those years, felt familiar. Drifting with Mako doesn’t. It feels like an entirely new experience, like they’ve both changed too much for their neural patterns to feel the same at all. Mako’s mind is electricity, racing a mile a minute but at a steady, reliable pace. 

_ Don’t chase the rabbit _ , he hears her think. 

He has a flash of memory of all those times he tried to drift with Mako before, the overwhelming nature of her memories, the rush of trauma and loss. As soon as he thinks it, he feels it coming back to the surface again, and with it all the rest of Mako’s worst memories. The last time she thought everything was ending, the plan to close the breach, their father’s last words — 

Then he feels it, the fight that Mako is putting up against those memories and the current that is still dragging them to the surface. And he realizes the current is coming from him. 

_ Yes _ , Mako thinks, and there’s a quality that’s almost joy to the realization.  _ You can’t want to see it more than you want the connection, Jake, you can’t go looking for that. You have to trust me, I trust you. Trust me.  _

_ I do,  _ Jake thinks. 

He forces his mental energy into the pattern of Mako’s, pushing those memories down. Together, they fight it off. They’re in sync, Jake thinks. Finally. 

Jake squares his shoulders, and Gipsy Avenger does too. 

They’re going to save the world. 

*** 

After they save the world, Mako and Jake have to spend a lot of time in the infirmary. They’re fussed over by an endless amount of medical professionals, and then there’s everything else that has to be dealt with, the political fallout and the future of the PPDC and the whole “precursor emissary” situation. 

Nate’s there while they’re recovering, sitting at Jake’s side with his leg propped up like he’s not hurt much worse. His prognosis is good, the doctors say, and there’s no reason he won’t make a full recovery. 

“You better not say anything about the scars, Pentecost,” Nate says, and Jake grins. 

“What would I say? Scars are sexy, Lambert.” 

Behind Nate’s back, Mako gives him a thumbs up.

They both know where it’s going, in the way that you do when you drift. But they don’t have a whole lot of alone time until a few days later. 

Jake’s been trying to help with the effort to figure out what to do with Dr. Geiszler and the aliens invaders. The level of neurology, kaiju biology and human rights discussion are pretty well above Jake’s head, but it’s the only thing there is to focus on at the shatterdome, and he’s determined to find a way to contribute. 

After a long day of getting nothing done, Jake goes back to their shared quarters to find Nate attempted to change the dressing on his wounds himself, grimacing in pain. 

“Hey, hey,” Jake says immediately, snatching the bandages out of his hands. “Let me do that, champ.” 

Nate grumbles, but he lets Jake do it, and Jake doesn’t remark on the amount of dark, mottled bruising. His own must be just as bad. 

They both were so close to not making it out, Jake thinks, so close to the end of everything. He swallows down a lump in his throat. 

Nate looks down at him and Jake feels what might be a hint of the drift in the look that passes between them. Or it might just be how well they know each other, but either way, Jake’s not going to forget to be grateful for it again, and he can tell Nate’s thinking the same thing. 

“So,” Nate says. “To quote the best jaeger pilot I know: wanna make out sometime?” 

Jake kisses him with the familiarity of having known each other for years, of having been inside each other’s heads, and the reverence of knowing exactly how lucky they both are. It’s the best possible kind of kiss, he decides. 

Nate looks at him with soft eyes and leans his forward against Jake’s. “Hey,” he says. “You know something? You were right.” 

Jake raises an eyebrow. “Oh? About what?” 

“About the corps. About all of this. The last ten years—“ Nate looks away with a little laugh. “Well, they weren’t all great. I did a lot of shit I didn’t believe in. And I guess I stayed partially because I wanted to prove you shouldn’t have left.” 

Jake can’t help but laugh. “Yeah? Why do you think I stayed away?” 

Nate kisses him again, careful of both of their wounds but still pulling him closer. “After we solve this whole kaiju thing,” he says, “you want to get out of here? Move somewhere without any oceans, maybe try to make the world a better place or something?” 

Jake cocks his head to the side, pretending to consider it. “Can we get a dog?” 

“Yeah,” Nate laughs, pulling Jake in again by the collar of his jacket. “Yeah, I think that could work.” 

  
  



End file.
